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Tuesday, May 10, 2016

UK: Church of England says Labour’s anti-Semitism is a right-wing plot

Archbishop Cranmer reports:

“Best wait for the vitriolic onslaught,” tweeted Fr Simon Rundell,
when he was asked politely and courteously if he would like to add
anything or clarify his assertion that Labour’s anti-Semitism is a
fiction of the right-wing press, and that Conservatives are racist. “I
never read your blog anymore, but you have the followers & the
indignation,” he explained, seemingly preferring terse vitriol with a
hint of indignation to the sort of measured civility one might expect
from a Christian minister and curer of souls. So, one treads carefully
with this post. Fr Simon’s preference is to block those who question him
(no matter how courteously), and then to whip up his Twitter followers
in… well, vitriol and indignation. But perhaps it is vitriol and
indignation merely to point this out? Perhaps one ought simply to convey
the facts, if it is possible to do so without indignation.

Fr Simon Rundell is a “Progressive, radical Anglocatholic Parish iPriest” (that is how he describes himself: presumably it isn’t vitriolic to point this out). Yesterday, he tweeted this:

Please note that he didn’t merely RT a comment: he explicitly
endorsed this extract as “perceptive comment”, and expressed admiration
for the author’s “insight”. The author says the Conservative Party is
racist, and adduces as evidence for this a quotation from campaign
literature used in the constituency of Smethwick in the 1964 General Election.
The author also believes that Labour’s current problem with
anti-Semitism isn’t a problem at all: those who believe it is are being
“taken for a ride by our right-wing press”: it is, in short, a
right-wing plot to smear the Labour Party. The evidence adduced for this
is a reference to Palestinian children as “cockroaches” after “Israel
bombed their school”, and a reluctance to comment on “the atrocities
carried out in the name of Zionism”.

Setting aside the rather abundant evidence that Jeremy Corbyn appears to grasp the oppression of every minority except Jews; and the burgeoning dossier
of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, could someone please source
which right-wing British newspaper referred to Palestinian
schoolchildren as “cockroaches” after Israel bombed their school? Do,
please, feel free to tell us in the comment thread: it would be an
appalling dehumanisation if one did, but it isn’t immediately searchable
on Google. Didn’t the right-wing British press report Israel’s
bombardment of Gaza?